Some Family Gossip

Ooooh, I like some good gossip me. So I was amused to hear some from my mother today relating to the photos of their wedding which I put online on Tuesday. It's connected to this photograph:

This is the Cox family i.e. my mother's family and it's pretty much a full house with her mother and father and her siblings along with all her father's brothers and sisters and their partners standing up, her grandparents sitting down and four of her cousins.

The gossip relates to the grandparents. Seated from left to right you have her maternal grandmother Christina Weller Orme and her paternal grandparents Florence and Albert Cox. Her maternal grandfather Orme had died by then.

Some years after this photo was taken, in the mid-60s when I was just about sentient, Albert Cox died. In the gap between his death and his funeral, in fact on the day before I think, Christina Orme died. This apparently confirmed Florence's suspicions that something had been going on between the two of them!

Florence was a funny one in other ways too though. I'm pretty certain she's the one my mother also tells the tale about that some neighbour had died and my mother was despatched by her mother to tell her grandma Orme that this had happened. When she got there grandma Orme said "hello Pat, you've come to tell me that X had died". She claimed she knew this because she'd seen the neighbour walk through a wall earlier in the day! In times past they used to burn women like that ...¹

Going back to the photo it is a bit spooky looking at it though. For a start it's getting my head around the idea that the baby must be 50 now. It's also sobering to think that anyone in that photo who's much over 35 is probably dead. I think Mom said that only one of her parents' generation (i.e. the bulk of those standing up) is left now, one of her aunts. So only four of those standing (the others being the two bridesmaids, who're two of my aunts, and my uncle David who's second front the right) are still with us plus, hopefully, the four cousins.

1. Assuming that they weighed the same as a duck.